On 13 Jumādā I, 1377 (6 December, 1957), the Arabic edition of the Official Bulletin of Morocco2 published a Zahīr3 of 28 Rabi’ II, 1377 (22 November, 1957), which not only announced that a series of books covering matters of personal status and inheritance would be published (to constitute, when complete, a “Code of Personal Status and Inheritance” ), but that the first two books in this series—which were attached to the Zahīr and which covered the law of marriage and its dissolution, respectively —were to be brought into force throughout the Kingdom from 1 January, 1958.

A heartening impetus has been given in recent years to the study of the “reception” into the dependent and formerly dependent territories of English legal concepts and institutions. One such institution, the “reception” of which appears, so far, to have received little academic attention, is the English jury system.

Although the study of comparative law, or rather the study of foreign legal systems in a comparative manner, is in general of academic rather than practical value, except in so far as it gives us insights into the ideas, attitudes and procedures of our own legal system, yet for those who are concerned, as practitioner, judge or student, with certain types of legal system the position is radically different; I refer to legal systems in which internal conflicts of law arise. In such systems the judge is faced, constantly or even daily, with situations which require him, not merely to choose between one system and another as the appropriate one for the decision of the instant case, but to perform a running comparative interpretation, classification or analysis of the institutions of two or more legal systems, which must somehow be brought into harmony (one might aptly use the metaphor of meshing gears here). The part that a rule or a feature of one legal system plays in its functioning total legal complex must be understood, and the rule or feature must be properly characterised so as to permit it to be translated into another legal system which is administered concurrently with the first.